Matthew 6:13 - How Does the Lord's Prayer End? (Part 2)

          Let’s continue looking into the textual contest at the end of Matthew 6:13:  the basic question is, are the words “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen” – ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ἀμήν – part of the original text, or not? 

Matthew 6:13b in Codex L.

          As we saw in Part 1, over 98% of the Greek manuscripts that have this verse include these words (including Codex W) – but it is not included in the important manuscripts Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Bezae, the fifth-century uncial fragment 0171, and the fragmentary palimpsest Codex Z (Dublinensis, 035).  It is not supported by the core representatives of family-1, but it is included in family-13.  The Gothic version and the Armenian version (and others) have it, but most representatives of the Old Latin version, as well as the two most ancient copies of the Middle Egyptian version, do not have it.  The early patristic writers Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian (in Treatise 4), Ambrose, and Cyril of Alexandria (in Catechetical Lecture XXIII) comment on the Lord’s Prayer but do not mention this reading, and several others (Hilary of Poitiers, Caesarius, Gregory of Nyssa) do not mention it when they use this verse – but it was quoted by John Chrysostom (c. 400), and it was quoted in Apostolic Constitutions (380), and it appears to have been utilized by the author of the Didache – an exceptionally early composition (early 100s). 

          The unknown author of the Latin composition Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum (early 400s) also quoted Matthew 16:13b, in Homily 14, in a way which shows that he read it in his text of Matthew.  This reference is interesting, not only because it gives additional Latin support to the reading, but because it augments the theological range of the support for the reading; while Chrysostom was thoroughly orthodox, the author of Opus Imperfectum was not. 

          With all that in mind, we now turn to some evidence which is not featured in the usual textual apparatuses:  amulets.  The Lord’s Prayer was ubiquitously used in church-services, but it was also applied to a different purpose in some parts of the Roman Empire:  when Christians made small amulets containing snippets of Scripture, one of the most-used passages in such items – after the beginnings of each of the Gospels – was the Lord’s Prayer.  

          Let’s take a look at some of these amulets and the text(s) they contain.

          ● Papyrus Ct.YBR 4600, housed at Yale University, was made sometime in the 500s-700s.  It consists of a single sheet of papyrus, blank on the reverse side.  It contains Matthew 6:9b-13, but is torn down the middle; as a result about half of the text is not extant.  In verse 13, it appears that the word “Lord” was added after “Lead us not into temptation.”  After “But deliver us from evil,” the doxology does not appear, but rather than come to a close, the text continues with one more line, which says, “To our Lord.”  It seems debatable whether “To our Lord” should be regarded as a closing-title, or as a phrase introducing some non-extant continuation.

          ● Papyrus Oxyrhynchus LX 4010 is assigned to the 300s.  It is a liturgical prayer, and instead of beginning with “Our Father” it has an introductory portion (which cannot be confident deciphered due to extensive damage, but which seems to address God as the All-powerful Master and God of all comfort).  In v. 12, this witness reads ωσπερ instead of ως.  It does not have the doxology after “but deliver us from evil.”  After “our debtors” and “into temptation,” the remainders of two lines have been obliterated.  It appears that after writing, “but deliver us from evil,” the writer repeated the words “deliver us.”  It is possible that more text followed on another page.

          ● Á3 (Talisman 3), also known as BGU 3.954, was excavated at Herakleopolis Magna, Egypt, and is assigned to the 500s.  It contains – or contained – an apotropaic prayer (i.e., a prayer for protection and health), and it begins by addressing God as the All-powerful Master. (It is similar in this respect to P. Oxy. LX 4010.)  An individual named Silvanus prays for protection from demons, and from illness, and then introduces “the Gospel-prayer” – Matthew 6:9b-13. The word “Lord” was added after “Lead us not into temptation.”  After that, the document is damaged but enough has survived to show that it contained a doxology that included the words “the glory forever.”  This is followed by snippets from John 1:1 and Matthew 1:1 and a final petition for health.     

          (Unfortunately, as Brice Jones explains in his book New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity, this witness was part of the cargo that perished in 1899 when the ship transporting it from Egypt to Europe caught fire in the Hamburg harbor.  Fortunately the document had been meticulously described by researchers Ulrich Wilken and Charles Wessely.)

         

          ● Á6, also known as Papyrus Iandani I.16 is an Egyptian document from the 400s or 500s.  It includes the text of the Lord’s Prayer, and includes a doxology – “for yours is the glory forever and ever.”  It has other material besides the Lord’s Prayer:  it also features the opening lines of Matthew 1:1, part of Matthew 8:1 (or Luke 9:37), part of Luke 11:1-2, snippets from Psalm 90, and more – all rather garbled, but as Brice Jones has noted, Ernest Schäfer helpfully diagnosed the cause of the mix-up and rearranged the text that the novice copyist was attempting to write.   

          ● Á13, also known as Papyrus Duke inv. 778, made in the 500s, is a double-sided amulet; Psalm 91 (in Greek) is on one side and the Lord’s Prayer is on the other side.  A detailed description of this document can be found in an article in the 2004 Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists by Csaba La’da and Amphilochios Papathomas.  (For a picture and transcript, see this link.)  The words “Your will be done” and “as we forgive our debtors” are absent. The word “Lord” appears after “Lead us not into temptation” (a feature also seen in Á3).  After “Deliver us from evil,” there is an expanded doxology:  “Through the only-begotten” – at this point there is a hole in the papyrus which might have contained the contracted word “Son” – “for yours is the glory and the power and the all-holy Spirit, now, always, and forever and ever.  Amen.”  (“Amen” is written as ϘΘ, two Greek letters which have a numerical value of 99, the same as the word ἀμήν (α = 1, μ = 40, η = 8, ν = 50).  In the papyrus, the Θ is only minimally extant.)  This concluding phrase is similar to the way in which Gregory of Nyssa concluded his catechetical lecture on the Lord’s Prayer, and it also resembles a liturgical formula, which we will consider soon.

          Another witness that should not be ignored is the Gnostic composition called the Prayer of the Apostle Paul.  This text is written in Coptic on the flyleaf of Nag Hammadi Codex 1 (the Jung Codex), which is about as old as Codex Sinaiticus.  Like the texts on apotropaic amulets, this brief composition is a request for protection and health.  It contains some phrases strongly reminiscent of Saying 17 in the “Gospel of Thomas” (which, in turn, resembles First Corinthians 2:9, which is mainly an adaptation of Isaiah 64:4) and Philippians 2:9.  The Gnostic (probably Valentinian) author concludes the prayer with, “For yours is the power and the glory and the praise and the greatness, forever and ever, Amen.” 

          The Prayer of the Apostle Paul includes the request, “give healing for my body when I ask you through the Evangelist,” and although this has been interpreted as a reference to Paul, I suggest that “the Evangelist” means the same thing as “the Gospel-prayer” in Á3.

          Isidore of Pelusium (late 300s-450) also quoted the doxology, twice, in the course of commenting on the Lord’s Prayer, in his Fourth Book of Epistles, #14, To Eutonius the Deacon (cf. Migne PG Vol. 78, col. 1073 and 1076).  This is especially interesting since he resided in Alexandria before taking up monastic responsibilities at Pelusium; one would expect him to have used instead a text that agreed with the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text.

          Other evidence joins Isidore in confirming that the non-inclusion of Matthew 6:13b was not the only reading known in Egyptian transmission-lines.  Codex L and minuscules 33 and 1241 are among the MSS that support inclusion.  Minuscule 892, widely considered the most Alexandrian of all Gospels-minuscules, also includes the doxology.  

          When one considers that Sahidic and Fayummic versions support “For yours is the power and glory forever, Amen,” a case can be made that the non-inclusion of the doxology is essentially a Western reading than has Alexandrian support:  The Alexandrian witnesses À B and 0171 and Cyril have the shorter reading, as does the Middle Egyptian version; however, that seems to be the extent of support for non-inclusion among  Alexandrian witnesses.  Meanwhile, among the Western witnesses for non-inclusion are D, at least seven Old Latin copies, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, the Vulgate, and Peter Chrysologus.   

          (It may be noted that practically next door in 6:15, À is allied with mainly Western witnesses, favoring another non-inclusion (the non-inclusion of τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν.) 

         

          So:  which reading accounts for the creation of its rival?  Though this question expresses a standard text-critical canon – the paramount text-critical canon – it is in some cases an oversimplification, because some readings created by copyists (especially shorter readings) may arise due to factors that are not suggested by rival readings.  

          In the case at hand, it should be clear to everyone that the use of doxologies was very widespread, not only in the writing of personal prayers, but also in prayers offered in church-services.  The amulets provide examples of the former; the Didache provides examples of the latter.  It should also be clear that the Lord’s Prayer was subject to adaptation – sometimes via expansion, and sometimes via abridgement.  (The prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 was vulnerable to abridgement via harmonization to the prayer in Luke 11:2-4, just as the prayer in Luke was vulnerable to expansion to the prayer in Matthew 6.)  Additional examples of prayers with doxologies being offered in church-services are found in the liturgies that have been handed down from antiquity.  Let’s consider two examples.

          ● In what is known as the Liturgy of Saint James, after the priest recites embellished citations of the first two clauses of Matthew 6:13, he is to say out loud, “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever,” and then the congregation is to reply with “Amen.” 

          ● In what is known as the Anaphora of Saint Basil, the priest says, “For Yours is the dominion, the kingdom, the power, and the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever to the age of ages.”  And further along in the service, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer occurs just before the breaking of the bread in the communion-service:  the congregation is to recite the Lord’s Prayer up to the end of the phrase, “Deliver us from evil,” and then the priest is to  recite the doxology, with an embellishment (or “embolism”), saying, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.”
          (Additional liturgical examples of prayer-conclusions which ascribe glory to God in one way or another – such as “In the name of Your only-begotten Jesus Christ, through whom to You is the glory and the strength in the Holy Spirit to all the ages of the ages, Amen” and “Through Your only-begotten to Thee is the glory and the strength in Holy Spirit, now and to all the ages of the ages, Amen” – can be found in the Sacramentary of Sarapion of Thmuis, which is generally considered to have been produced in the mid-300s.)

         

Matthew 6:13b in 892.

In the late 1800s, Dean Burgon, conscious of this liturgical custom, proposed that it is so ancient that it accounts for the rival reading in Matthew 6:13.  Several pages of Causes of Corruption are devoted to the exploration of this variant-unit.  Burgon pointed out that if the doxology was added to the text of Matthew after previously existing as a liturgical formula, then instead of seeing, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen,” we would see, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages” – which, although it is what we see in the Anaphora of Basil and the Liturgy of Saint James,  is not what we see, except in two manuscripts (157 and 1253).  The idea that Matthew 6:13b was based on a liturgical formula, Burgon argued, is just the opposite of what ought to be concluded:  instead, a variety of liturgical formulas are based on Matthew 6:13b. 

          Burgon proceeded to propose that the loss of Matthew 6:13b was related to the custom of having the congregation recite the Lord’s Prayer up to the end of “deliver us from evil,” and then having the priest alone recite the doxology.  An early copy with a mark beside it – intended to mean that the doxology was not to be read aloud by the congregation – could easily be misconstrued by a professional copyist to mean that the doxology was not to be written by the scribe.  And thus the whole phrase failed to be perpetuated in a transmission-line that branched out into the base-texts of the Old Latin version(s), and the Alexandrian text-form represented by À B Mae, and the text used by Origen. 

 

Matthew 6:12-13 in Codex K.

         Such an occurrence would have to happen extremely early – sometime in the 100s.  But this is completely feasible.  As evidence that liturgical formulas were in use in liturgies in the 100s, we may turn to Irenaeus’ work Against Heresies, Book One, chapter 3:  remarking on false teachers’ heresies about Aeons, he mentions that “We ourselves, when at the Eucharist, pronounce the words “to aeons of aeons”” – that is, the words “forever and ever.”  We see the same kind of expression in Á3, Á6, Á13, and the Gnostic “Prayer of the Apostle Paul.”

          The words “and ever” in the liturgy are a natural expansion – but an expansion of what?  When we see, in the Didache, a description of the Lord’s Prayer being used at a communion-service in the 100s, and when we see, from Irenaeus, a reference to the phrase “forever and ever” being used at the communion-service in the 100s, it seems reasonable to conclude that Irenaeus is referring to an expansion of the same Matthean doxology described in the Didache.

          Thus the table was set, so to speak, in the 100s for a scribal mechanism that could cause the accidental loss of Matthew 6:13b in exemplars that were in the ancestry of both the Old Latin version, and a significant segment of the Alexandrian text-stream, and a form of Matthew used by Origen.  This accounts for the absence of the doxology in the quotations by Latin writers reading Old Latin copies (such as Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine), and for the absence of the doxology in copies used by Origen. 

CONCLUSION

          Since the days of Erasmus, it has been alleged that the doxology in Matthew 6:13 is an accretion that slipped into the text from the liturgy.  In the 1700s, Bengel expressed this idea in his Gnomon (Vol. 1, pages 192-195), pointing out that the medieval writer Euthymius, in the course of criticizing the Bogomils for not using the doxology, claimed that it “the choral conclusion added by those who were the divine illuminators and guides of the church.”  (Without closer study, I cannote tell if Euthymius really criticized the Bogomils for avoiding a reading which he admitted was an accretion, or if Euthymius meant nothing more than that Matthew 6:13b was used as the framework for part of the liturgy by those to whom the liturgies are attributed.)  Bengel’s research on the passage can be consulted in the text-critical appendix of his 1734 Η Καινη Διαθηκη and in his Apparatus Criticus.

          More recently, Bruce Metzger claimed that the evidence “suggests that an ascription, usually in a threefold form, was composed (perhaps on the basis of 1 Chr 29.11-13) in order to adapt the Prayer for liturgical use in the early church.” (Compare Hort’s Notes on Select Readings on this variant-unit.)

          This is a convenient explanation for defenders of the Alexandrian text, but the same thought, in the minds of early scribes, would be an effective impetus for the removal of the doxology from the text of Matthew.  Picture a Christian in the second century attending church-services in which the congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer up to the end of “Deliver us from evil,” and the priest (or elder) proceeds to recite the doxology.  In the mind of some participants, the words recited by the congregation – and only those words – were perceived as the prayer; the doxology being regarded as a liturgical flourish.  If such a participant were to proceed to become a scribe, it would be very easy for him to conclude, when encountering the doxology in Matthew 6:13 in an exemplar, that the scribe of his exemplar had mistakenly included a liturgical flourish in the text – and all the more easily considering that there is no such doxology in Luke 11. 

          Of course no one on earth can demonstrate that this happened in the second century; yet the implication of this theory – that Mt. 6:13b is original – is supported not only by a vast proportion of manuscripts (over 98%), but by the significantly earliest witness (the Didache), and by widespread witnesses (Chrysostom, Isidore of Pelusium, Codex W, L, Δ, 892, 1192, 2812, the Peshitta, the Gothic version, the Armenian version, the Opus Imperfectum, etc.).  The non-inclusion of “For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen” should be considered an early Western reading that was adopted in Egypt but which failed to gain wide acceptance in other Greek transmission-lines (not unlike the non-inclusion of τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν in Matthew 6:15).



Readers are encouraged to explore the embedded links for additional resources.

 

The Tors-Costa Debate, Part 2

THE DEBATERS RESPOND

            At the outset of the second part of the Tors-Costa debate about how the original text of the New Testament should be reconstructed, technical difficulties caused Tony Costa’s voice to be briefly inaudible.  When the sound resumed, he was addressing Tors’ claim that the Alexandrian Text has an error in Mark 1:2, where the main part of the quotation is from Malachi.  (Tors has argued in an online essay that although evangelical apologists argue that it was not unusual to blend separate quotations and attribute them to a single source, the evidence for the existence of such a custom is extremely elusive.)  Let’s resume there.  Once again, I will summarize the debaters’ statements and offer comment in italics. 

            

            Consider – Costa reasoned – Matthew 27:9, where words that are found in Zechariah 11:12 are attributed by Matthew to Jeremiah.  Some copyists saw the difficulty and therefore altered the text.  Similarly in Acts 20:28, where the Textus Receptus has a difficult reading that seems to imply that God has blood, scribes altered the text.   (It may have been ill-advised spin to say that “a  Majority Text manuscript” changed the difficult reading to an easier one in Matthew 27:9, for this only makes the point stand out more clearly that the vast majority of manuscripts do not avoid the more difficult reading in that case; most scribes thus acted contrary to the premise that Costa is defending.) 

            Byzantine manuscripts, Costa asserted, changed the text in Matthew 27:9.  He provides their identities:  Codex 22, which has Zechariah’s name in the text, and “Family 33, which is also Majority Text, omits the prophet’s name altogether.”  

            (There are just two problems with that.  First, minuscule 22’s text frequently diverges from the Byzantine norm; it is not a typical Byzantine manuscript.  Second, Costa misinterpreted a printed reference to “F 33” as if the F is an abbreviation for  “family” but that is not what it means (there is no “family 33”); it represents Codex Boreelianus, and 33 refers to minuscule 33, which is, according to Metzger, “an excellent representative of the Alexandrian type of text.” Thus Costa has misdirected his accusation of scribal unreliability in two ways.  First, he is illustrating the dangers of relying on small minorities of manuscripts; that is where the non-original reading is found in this case.  The approach that he is arguing against is precisely the approach that avoids the adoption of such errors.  Second, he has unintentionally exposed the unreliability of a chief member of the group of manuscripts that he is trying to convince his listeners is the most reliable.)  

Tony Costa, demonstrating
a rationalistic approach.

            Next, Costa addressed Tors’ statement about Byzantine readings in the papyri, responding (as expected) that none of the papyri exhibit strong and sustained patterns of agreement with the Byzantine Text.  (This was not a very effective response, since Tors had only claimed that the papyri contained mixed texts; the question being how Byzantine readings got into the mix if the Byzantine Text didn’t yet exist.  It’s like finding a small mound containing salt, pepper, and paprika in a kitchen where there is not supposed to be any paprika.  Simply saying that a container full of paprika was not found does not change the implication.)

            Costa then said, “John said that there are mistakes in the Majority Text,” and as an example of a type of mistake, he mentioned harmonizations – specifically, harmonizations in the Lord’s Prayer in Luke (i.e., Luke 11:2-4), where, in the Majority Text, “The Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 has expanded to match the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew.”  Costa put things more forcefully:  “In the later manuscripts, you’ll notice that the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke is exactly the same as the Gospel of Matthew, with the doxology added to the end, ‘For Thine is the kingdom, the glory, and the power, and so forth.’”

            (Which is forceful – but wrong.  In the Byzantine Text, where Matthew 6:11 has δὸς, Luke 11:3 has δίδου.  Where Matthew’s text has σήμερον, Luke’s text has τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν.  Where Matthew’s text has τὰ ὀφειλήματα, Luke’s text has τὰς ἁμαρτίας.  Where Matthew’s text has ὡς και, Luke’s text has και γὰρ.  And – passing by some other differences – the Lord’s Prayer in Luke in the Byzantine Text does NOT have the doxology that appears in Matthew 6:13 in the Byzantine Text.  

            (Not only is Costa’s claim false, but it can be reversed, and the absence of “but deliver us from evil” in the Alexandrian Text of Luke 11:4 can be used as an example of Alexandrian omission, and the absence of the doxology in the Alexandrian Text of Matthew can be used as an example of Alexandrian harmonization – in this case, a conformation of Matthew’s text to the parallel in Luke.  Fortunately for Costa, his friendly opponent did not pursue these points.)

            (A better example of a rationalistic approach in action – in which someone paints a reasonable-sounding picture of how scribes made harmonizations, while failing to carefully examine the evidence – could scarcely be hoped for.)

            (Also, the order in the doxology is kingdom, then power, then glory.)

            Then, in response to Tors’ observation about the plethora of scribal errors in Papyrus 66, Costa said that scribes made so many mistakes because they were working under stressful conditions, specifically, Roman persecution.  The Alexandrian scribes, Costa proposed, were “on the run.” (I suspect/hope that this idea came to Costa on the spot, without a test of its plausibility.)  

            The last section of Costa’s response to Tors’ opening statement was a disjointed collection of miscellaneous and tangential points: (One of these points ended up being revisited later in the debate.)     

            ● God had used the Vulgate and a variety of versions based on different texts (Tors’ focus had been altogether elsewhere; perhaps this observation was made as if to suggest that God does not share the “very adversarial approach” that Costa attributed to Tors.  An adversarial approach in a debate; what a concept.) 

            ● A “majority rules” approach does not work with the Old Testament text.  (Costa thus opposed a view that Tors never advocated or even mentioned in his opening statement.)   

            ● The Majority text does not have “daily” in Luke 9:23; isn’t that a scribal harmonization?  (Tors never answered this question, but if he had, the answer would probably be that the minority reading with “daily” (καθ’ ἡμέραν), familiar due to its inclusion in the Textus Receptus, is an Alexandrian harmonization from First Corinthians 15:31.)

            ● A note (in Vaticanus at Hebrews 1:3) rebuking a copyist who tried to correct the text shows that Alexandrian copyists faithfully transmitted the text.  (Costa seemed unaware that the old reading which the note-writer is zealous to preserve (φανερον) is a mistake; the reading there in Nestle-Aland and in the Byzantine Text is φέρων.)

            ● Textual criticism is very complicated and people should read Metzger & Ehrman’s The Text of the New Testament.  (Because there’s nothing like recommending a book by an ecumenical Bible-condenser and an atheist to convince people at church that your position is faith-friendly.)

            ● Modern translations such as the ESV (which Costa called the Evangelical Standard Version; this was a joke, I think) do not really deny any important doctrines. 

Then Tors responded. (It was very advantageous to go second in this part of the debate, because Tors could thus respond not only to Costa’s opening statement but also to Costa’s response.)  He used the words that Costa had just delivered as part of the framework for his response.    Tors made eight corrective points before addressing Costa’s earlier remarks:

            ● Nobody is saying that all the Byzantine manuscripts agree perfectly; of course the Byzantine manuscripts are not 100% uniform.  That does not say anything about the validity of the Majority Reading approach. 

            ● About the note in Vaticanus:  this supports exactly what Tors has been saying:  although some scribes, on rare occasions, tried to alter the text, their efforts were opposed.

            ● Regarding Matthew 27:9:  we see some scribes alter the text, but how many?  A very small number, nowhere remotely close to a majority.  This once again supports the view that the vast majority of scribes did not consciously alter their texts, and most people did not accept such rare alterations.

            ● About the rival readings in Mark 1:2:  is the Byzantine reading correct?  Yes; even if one posits a thematic connection to a passage in Exodus (I think that must have been mentioned in the part of Costa’s statement where there is no audio), Moses was a prophet, so it’s not a problem.  But is the Alexandrian reading correct?  No.  The apologists try to say, “There was this scribal practice of ascribing several quotes from several sources to one source” but (Tors says) when he checked it out, he found no substantial basis for that assertion.  (This is not an approach that I would take; rather, granting that a writer could validly cite more than one thematically related passages from the Old Testament but only name one of them specifically – I would point to the strong scribal tendency to identify unnamed prophets and other unnamed individuals in the Gospels as evidence that in cases such as Mark 1:2, the idea that the less specific reading is to be preferred should be brought to bear.)

            ● What about Matthew 27:9?  It’s not a problem because the text refers to what was spoken by Jeremiah.  Nothing precludes the idea that Jeremiah spoke a prophecy that was also written by Zechariah.  (It might have been helpful to point out the parallels between parts of Jeremiah 49, and parts of the text of Obadiah.)  Similarly in Matthew 1:23, Matthew refers to a prophecy that was spoken but which is not found in written form anywhere in the books of the prophets. There simply was not a custom of saying that what had been written by one man was written by someone else.  (In my view, a case can be made that Matthew – writing to a readership well-acquainted with the Old Testament writings – felt that it would not be problematic to draw a thematic link between a passage in Jeremiah, and a passage in Zechariah without naming both sources.  That does not mean that Mark was in a similar situation; for further analysis regarding Mark 1:2 see my online essay about that variant-unit.) 

            ● It is not an ad hominem argument to call Griesbach a “rationalist.”  That is an accurate assessment of his philosophy and of the basis for his text-critical assumptions:  he valued what seemed reasonable, rather than what was tested and experienced. 

            ● Regarding Papyrus 66:  Roman persecution came in waves; the scribes simply were not under the kind of constant stress that Costa has described.  (Costa’s description is speculation through and through.  Tors surely pulled his punches here.)

            ● Is the majority always right?  Not always; after all, Tors is advocating a view held by a minority of scholars.  But showing that some majorities are wrong does nothing to show that the Majority Text approach is wrong.

            Tors then presented a map of the Byzantine Empire as it existed in the year 600.  Revisiting Costa’s claims about why the Alexandrian Text disappeared, Tors points out that the Byzantine Empire included a huge swath of territory; it was not a localized corner of text-production.  Against Costa’s claim that the Byzantine Text did not become the majority until the ninth century, when we look at the use of the Byzantine Text in this huge territory, we have to ask, if the Alexandrian Text was in the majority, why did the people in this area stop using it?  Roman persecution ended in the 300’s; Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire by the 400’s – and we see the Byzantine Text used in the 400’s and 500’s.  Why not the Alexandrian Text, if that was the majority? 

             Also, we keep being told by advocates of the Alexandrian Text that the early church fathers in the first 300 years quoted the Alexandrian Text.  But when we examine their quotations, that’s arguable.  (Tors built the case gradually:  arguable, then questionable, then . . . )  It is mistaken.  The early patristic quotations of the New Testament are a textual mishmash; they do not support one form or another – but they side with the Byzantine Text more than with anything else.  (It would have been helpful to provide a few concrete examples, such as Clement’s text of Matthew.)  In addition, the pro-Alexandrian case benefits from an absence of evidence where early patristic evidence is concerned:  there are no early patristic writings from Antioch and the surrounding area that are substantial enough to analyze.  (Tors seemed to have more to say about this, but he apparently had some technical difficulty with his digital slides, and moved on.)

John Tors, commenting about
intentional textual changes.

            Tors then addressed Griesbach’s fundamental premise:  did scribes intentionally change the text? (Costa had mentioned a couple of passages that he considered alterations.  Tors could have easily gotten distracted and attempted to focus on those specific passages in detail – but instead he kept his focus.)  Without granting that any reading in the Majority Text is not original, Tors simply noted that he had never said that deliberate alterations never happened; he only insisted that they were rare.  And Costa only gave a few examples – because they are rare.  (Tors could have really hammered this point by pointing out that even the most prominent examples of harmonization that Costa gave – the exact harmonization of the Lord’s Prayer, and the inclusion of the doxology in the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 – are non-existent.)    

            As Tors wrapped up this part of the debate, he once again stated that although the reasoned eclectic approach yields a text that contains errors, the Majority Reading approach yields a text that is inerrant.  And it is the original inerrant text the textual critics should aim to reconstruct, even though God has shown that He is able to use imperfect compilations and even flawed translations such as the Vulgate.

            In this part of the debate, Costa presented practically no point for which Tors (even without taking advantage of Costa’s gaffes) did not have an effective answer.  Tors did not, however, spend much time addressing Costa’s claim that it would be “dangerous” to apply the Majority Reading approach to the Old Testament text, probably because Tors never suggested doing so, and because the announced subject of the debate was not the Old Testament text.  Somehow this soon drifted into the main current of the debate. 

            Coming soon:  Part 3: The Debaters Cross-Examine Each Other.    

Codex Sinaiticus and Sloppy Sensationalism

Question for the Biblical Archaeological Society staff:  do you know what you’re doing?

Earlier this month, a small article at the website of the Biblical Archaeology Society about Codex Sinaiticus (an important early Greek manuscript of the Bible) was released.  The authors, it seems, were not very concerned about getting their facts straight.  

The errors in the BAS article’s “visual comparison” of the KJV and Codex Sinaiticus include the following:  

(1)  The article’s title for the ending of Mark is titled “The Markan Resurrection (Mark 16:1–14)” but the reference should be to Mark 16:1-20.  

(2)  The article states that Codex Sinaiticus begins Mark 16:1 by stating, “And when the sabbath was past,” but in the manuscript, the copyist made a mistake when he accidentally skipped from Mary Magdalene’s name in Mark 15:47 to her name in 16:1, skipping the words in between. 

(3)  The article stated that Codex Sinaiticus refers to “Jesus of Nazareth” in Mark 16:6, but in Codex Sinaiticus, the words “of Nazareth” are not in the text.

(4)  The article quotes Matthew 6:9 without its opening phrase (“In this manner, therefore, pray”).

(5)  The article stated that Codex Sinaiticus lacks the Greek words on which the phrase, “who art in heaven” is based in Matthew 6:9.  However, the words are in the manuscript’s text of Matthew 6:9, plain as day.

(6, 7)  By translating the text of Codex Sinaiticus differently than the KJV, the article-writers make it appear as if Codex Sinaiticus’ text is different from the Greek base-text of the KJV in Matthew 6:10 (KJV:  “Give us this day our daily bread” – Sinaiticus:  “Give us day by day our daily bread”) and 6:11a (KJV:  “And forgive us our debts” – Sinaiticus:  “And forgive us our sins”).  The two Greek texts are identical, except for a spelling-variation in the word for “our.” (The normal spelling is umeiV; Codex Sinaiticus’ copyist spelled it as umiV.)

(8)  The article stated that Codex Sinaiticus, in the part of Matthew 6:11 that parallels the KJV’s phrase, “as we forgive our debtors,” says, instead, “as we ourselves also forgive every one that is indebted to us.”  In real life, the text of Codex Sinaiticus has the Greek equivalent of “as we have forgiven our debtors.”   

(9)  The BAS article describes the story of the woman caught in adultery as “John 8:3-11.”  This would be amusing in the work of a novice student; in the work of influential scholars, it is disturbing.  The passage in question – a rather well-known passage – begins at John 7:53, not John 8:3.

(10)  The BAS article states that Codex Sinaiticus is missing all of Luke 9:55-56, as if the entire passage is missing.  In the KJV, this passage runs as follows:  “But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.  For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.  And they went to another village.”  In Codex Sinaiticus, the BAS article claims, this is “Not present.”

Codex Sinaiticus does not include the part of this passage that contains a direct quotation from Jesus, but the manuscript contains Greek text from Luke 9:55-56 that runs, in English, as follows:  “But he turned, and rebuked them, and they went to another village.”  (Without detouring to discuss the passage further, I note that the full reading is in several Old Latin manuscripts, including Codex Vercellensis, a copy that was probably made in the 370’s.)

 

Mark 1:41 in Codex Sinaiticus:  the Greek word for
"filled with compassion" occupies one line
of the manuscript's narrow columns.

(11)  The BAS article states that Codex Sinaiticus has Jesus’ name in Mark 1:41.  A simple consultation of the manuscript – page-views are online – shows that this is not true.

(12)  The BAS article states that instead of referring to Jesus being filled with compassion, Codex Sinaiticus says that Jesus was “angry” when he stretched out his hand to heal a leper.  However, the one Greek manuscript with that reading is not Codex Sinaiticus; it is Codex Bezae, a Greek-Latin manuscript known for its anomalies.  (In this case, Codex Bezae’s unusual Greek reading probably originated as a retro-translation of an early translator’s attempt to render the Greek word splangchnistheis, which means “filled with compassion” but, interpreted over-literally, can be rendered as moved-in-the-guts.)  Codex Sinaiticus, along with Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Washingtoniensis and 1,600 other Greek manuscripts, reads splangchnistheis – “filled with compassion.”

Caveat lector!  (Reader, beware!)